Bacteria

The old woman wearing a long winter coat meets us at the backdoor. She mutters as she locks the door. She is a tiny bony, wrinkled woman wearing an obvious brunette wig. I ask her how she is and she mutters, “terrible, terrible.” I try to ask her some questions, but she is so busy fussing with her keys and her pocketbook that I just give up, and decide I’ll start again in the ambulance.

“What’s wrong?” I ask once we have her all secured on the stretcher and I apply the BP cuff.

“I’ve been vomiting.”

“What does it look like?”

She looks at me like I am crazy. “There’s bacteria in my urine. The medicine they gave me is making me sick.”

I try asking her other questions, but she is too busy rooting around in her pocketbook to pay attention to me. “What did I do with my teeth?” she asks. “Where are my teeth?”

“I don’t know,” I say, but she isn’t talking to me.

She finally finds them in a plastic bag, then slurps them into her mouth.

“What kind of medical problems do you have?” I ask again.

“Why there’s bacteria in my urine,” she says.

Our conversation doesn’t get much better. She is stable so we just take her in.

***

Next we do a nursing home psych I have taken in before and a motor vehicle with a pregnant female. I BLS the psych and at the last minute just before we get to the hospital I toss an IV into the pregnant woman who is due in a couple weeks. I have her c-spined with the right side of the board elevated. She says her abdomen hurts and her head is spinning. She was in the backseat and didn’t have a set belt when the car was t-boned at a low speed. I give her a little 02 just to be cautious.